Guild Mage: Apprentice

24. Varuna

Wren could almost smell the jungle, if she closed her eyes and ignored the salt-scent of the ocean, and the myriad flavors of humanity’s stench that permeated Calder’s Landing. Behind her, the Swan of the Sea was already in the process of unloading sorely needed supplies from Lucania, but she was glad to finally be leaving the square-rigged ship behind. She’d packed away the winter clothes she’d worn during her mission, and dressed in a loose cotton blouse, sandals, and a skirt.

With a shrug of her shoulders, Wren settled her pack on her back, hefted the unstrung longbow in her left hand, and dove into the streets of the settlement. Calder’s Landing had been hacked out of the jungle only eight years before, and compared to the established castle-towns and cities of Lucania, it looked like little more than an armed camp.

The streets were packed earth that turned to mud every time it rained - which was often. The eastern coast and surrounding jungle got more water in a season than places like Whitehill received in a year. Wren’s boots squelched as she turned away from the rows of tents crammed with new arrivals, and walked in the direction of the Sign of the Dancing Lady.

Wren would have preferred to just walk out through the stockade gate, wait until she was out of sight, and then take to the air. By The Mother, she would have rather flown the entire way, but the ocean between the continents was simply too wide. She would have fallen out of the sky from exhaustion and drowned long before she made it halfway.

No, she was going to be cautious. Wren had been gone for months, and who knew what had happened while she’d been away. Taika would, that was certain, so Wren kicked the dirt of the streets off her boots against the wooden steps that led up to the common room of the inn, then found herself a seat at the bar.

"Wren Wind Dancer," Taika greeted her, with a broad smile and a mug of hot cacao. "It’s been a long time, Red Shield. I half expected to never see you again - easy for a country girl to get swallowed up by the big city. Dinner and a room, before you head out?"

"Just dinner, please," Wren said, accepting the mug and taking a sip. The bite of ground Varunan peppers mixed into the cacao brought a smile to her lips, and she didn’t try to fight it. "No one in Lucania gets this right," she said. Calder’s Landing wasn’t quite home, but it was a lot closer than the cold winter of Whitehill.

"There’s just something about the way the Drovers’ Guild freezing works," Taika agreed. "Ruins the taste." The Eldish woman fetched a slate with the day’s prices listed, and set it on the counter in front of Wren. If the inkeep’s pointed ears hadn’t been a clear enough sign of her heritage, her white hair and the way her porcelain skin blushed a light shade of lavender, rather than pink, made it certain. The old gods had designed the Eld for beauty, and the aesthetic tastes of the dead Vædim were said to have run to the exotic.

Wren ran her finger over the menu, and her stomach rumbled. Over forty days at sea, with little more than ship’s biscuits during the last leg, had left her with more than one sort of appetite. "All of this looks incredible," she admitted. "The soup, the octopus, and the cornbread." She reached into her belt pouch, counted out twenty copper pennies, and set them on the counter.

Taika raised an elegant eyebrow. Everything about the Eld was too perfect by half. "That’s quite a hefty tip," the innkeep remarked, not yet touching the coins.

"I’ve been gone for too long," Wren said. "I need to know what’s happening before I go back into the jungle."

"Fair enough," Taika said. "Calder and Wildheart are out on the Dawn Runner, somewhere south down the coast. The Triplets lost their healer in the jungle a week back, and are trying to hire a new one. There’s a group of fresh mages from Coral Bay, just finished their journeyman culling, went out about a week ago and haven’t been back yet."

"Silica been ahunt, at all?" Wren liked to keep tabs on the comings and goings of the closest wyrm. Iravata’s children weren’t exactly enemies, but they weren’t exactly friends, either. A thousand years had made for a lot of drifting among the old alliances.

"Not since last flood season," Taika assured her, with a shake of the head. "No news from the Red Shield Tribe, either. Your father hasn’t even been in to trade. Let me get your food together."

Wren sipped her spiced cacao. A few mage guild teams off exploring the jungle was nothing new, and no concern to her. They would either get themselves killed, or clear out the worst of the mana beasts around Calder’s Landing. That would make her journey easier, though there weren’t a lot of threats that could trouble her once she took to the air, in any event. The problem was that she hadn’t had a source of blood for the entire voyage. After a meal, that was going to be the first thing she had to take care of. Without blood, it would be a long trek on foot through the jungle.

Taika brought her a bowl of soup first, and it was as tasty as ever: a simple turtle soup with eggs, and a bit of onion and lemon juice to add flavor . The Elden woman’s success began with the fact she ran the only inn in the settlement, but she was smart enough to know she’d eventually be displaced if she didn’t offer something more than that. Her solution was to serve the best food around. Wren blew on her spoon to cool each bite just a little, but other than that she ate steadily until it was all gone. By that time, the main dish had arrived: grilled octopus, dusted with Varunan pepper, with fresh baked cornbread on the side, both drizzled in fresh honey. Wren hadn’t eaten so well since that fair in the mountains.

When she was done, Wren left the Dancing Lady and found the local butcher, a Courland man named Geoffrey who’d come over on the second set of ships. In Lucania, it would have been dark by now, but Varuna was a land of sun and heat, and the sky over the western jungle was still full of clouds painted in all the shades of dusk.

"Mistress Wind Dancer!" Geoffrey greeted her, with a broad grin. He didn’t stop slicing bacon off the carcass of a pig while he talked. "Wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again. Figured you’d finally been eaten by some monster in the jungle."

"Nothing in there more dangerous than me," Wren told him, though they both knew it was a lie. "Got any fresh blood for me, Geoffrey?"

He nodded. "I only just started this boar. One moment." The butcher set aside his knives, wiped his meaty hands on his apron, and fetched a stoppered clay bottle, which he set on his work table. "Take a sniff and check."

Wren lifted the bottle, pulled the cork, and sniffed. It was fresh pig’s blood alright, no more than an hour old. "The usual price?" she asked. When Geoffrey nodded, she put a silver down, and took the bottle. The high price was as much for his silence as for the blood itself. The butcher was already back to work before she’d turned around.

With her pack over her shoulders, the unstrung longbow in one hand, and her bottle of fresh blood in the other, Wren headed over to the west gate in the stockade. There were two men guarding it, and one raised his hand as she approached.

"Night’s a dangerous time to be leaving," he warned her.

"None of your business what happens to me out there," Wren told him. "Gate doesn’t close until dark, and the sun isn’t down yet."

"We won’t open it if you come running," his partner called after her, but she just walked past them. The settlement had originally been built along a high ridge that descended to a natural harbor, though Calder’s Landing had gradually filled in the eastern slope of the ridge as it grew, down to the sea. The jungle was cleared for a mile in every direction past the stockade, giving the guards on watch a good view of any trouble that might be on the way well before it arrived. That was one of the reasons they’d survived the first year.

The moment Wren stepped into the jungle, the air changed. It was somehow both more fresh, and heavier, layered with the scents of flowers, fruits, and the fertile earth that supported so much life. She let the ferns brush her bare legs, and simply enjoyed the feeling of coming home at last. Then, she uncorked the bottle of pig’s blood, raised it to her lips, and tipped her head back.

The blood was only lukewarm, but it coursed down her throat like fire. When it hit her belly, the warmth spread, tingling, out through every bit of Wren’s body, from the soles of her feet to her fingertips. She rolled her head to crack her neck, filled with power for the first time since she’d taken passage on the Swan of the Sea. With a thought, Wren’s body, and everything she wore or held, collapsed in.

It took only the space between heartbeats to turn into blood, and then back. A single downstroke of her wings, and Wren was soaring up through the jungle canopy into the twilight sky. She opened her mouth to send out a sound that no human could hear, and her bat-ears read the way it bounced and returned to her as easily as a book. She’d been travelling blind for far too long.

She flew west and then turned north, not halting until she’d found the banks of the great Airaduinë, and by that time the stars were out. The moon was dark, but the ring that split the sky overhead gave more than enough light to see by, even on two legs. Wren fluttered down in bat form, then shifted once more to the shape of a human woman. Then, she set her pack and bow down next to the water. She dug through the bag, beneath her spare clothes, until she found a packet of dried herbs she’d been saving the entire time she’d been gone, along with a small turned wooden bowl.

With water from the river, and a bit of clay, Wren crushed the herbs in the bowl to prepare the dye. Then, she braided back all but a single strand of her hair, to get it out of the way. That last lock, she soaked in the dye, taking the time to let it dry and set into a kind of paste. She would return to her people looking like one of them, not like an easterner. While she waited, Wren removed a bundle of clothing from her pack, and carefully unwrapped it.

Inside the bundle rested a statue of a voluptuous woman, carved from white stone. "Ractia," Wren murmured, beginning a prayer she’d known for as long as she could remember. "Lady of Blood. Great Mother, hear me. Grant me your blessing. Watch over me and bind my wounds; bless my womb; strike down my enemies. We are born in blood, and we die in blood. I offer mine to you."

Setting the statue down on the mud, Wren drew her hunting knife. She lifted her skirt high enough to prick her thigh, then smeared the drop of blood that resulted on the stone statue’s belly. For a moment, the single drop lingered, dark against the pale stone, and then it seeped into the statue like soup into a piece of bread. A moment later, there was no sign it had ever been there.

Wren wrapped the statue up again and carefully stowed it in her pack, then knelt at the bank of the river to wash the dye from her hair. It was too dark to see her reflection now, even by the light of the ring in the sky, but she knew there would now be a streak of deep purple in her dark hair. She unbraided the rest, shook her head, and let it all settle back in place. Then, she shouldered her pack, lifted her bow, and took to the skies once again.

North Wren flew, all that night, and stopped only to eat the next day when she found a grove of mango trees. There, she landed and ate as a bat, until she felt enough strength return to her wings that she could press on. The jungle passed away, as the land grew more dry, until she finally came in sight of the mountains, hunched like the shoulders of green giants.

She was halfway up the slope when she crossed into the shoal of the rift. From talk she’d overheard at the Dancing Lady, Wren knew that both the Eld and the Lucanian mages were able to sense the transition due to the density of mana. For her part, she had to pay attention to the change in plant growth and the kinds of animals below her. Not far in, Wren caught the scene of woodsmoke and cooking meat, and followed it to the camp.

This wasn’t the usual flood season camp of the Red Shields; no, as Wren had expected, the bloodletters were waiting for her at the shrine, which had been built at the very center of the rift. She didn’t know how long they’d been at their sacrifices - it couldn’t possibly have been the entire time she was gone. Perhaps they’d seen portents of her coming in the entrails. In any case, it wasn’t the bloodletters she wanted - it was her father.

Nighthawk Wind Dancer, chief of the Red Shield tribe, followed her descent with keen eyes. He was sitting in front of a cook fire on a makeshift bench made from a fallen tree trunk, gutting a large, dead peccary. Until she’d seen Lucanian pigs, she’d never understood why the easterners called them ’skunk pigs,’ but there was an undeniable similarity. The corpse must have been seventy pounds, Wren figured, as she swooped in, shifting forms in midair to land on two feet.

"Daughter," Nighthawk said, greeting her with a warm smile. "It has been too long since you left us. We have all missed you dearly." He set aside the half-dressed animal, wiped his hunting knife on a piece of cotton cloth he’d had ready for the purpose, then sheathed it and rose. "Was your hunt successful?"

"I found the icon," Wren assured him, dropping to one knee. She slung her pack off her back, set it in front of her, and reached inside to find the bundle. In moments, she had the statue unwrapped, and held it out to her father.

"Ractia," Nighthawk said. The name was like a sigh and a prayer wrapped together into one. "You have done well, Wren," her father told her, lifting the piece of white stone up to get a good look at it in the sunlight. "You have returned hope to our people. Come, let us take it to the bloodletters. They have been preparing for some time."

Wren left her bag by her father’s log; as the two set off, she saw one of her cousins, Calm Waters, hurry over to finish dressing the peccary. Calm Waters and her husband had been trying for a child for six years, without success, and it didn’t appear they had been blessed by The Mother during the time Wren had been away.

Side by side, Wren and her father trudged up to the summit of the mountain. They could have saved a great deal of time by taking to the air, but that would have shown a lack of respect. The proper way to approach the shrine was as supplicants.

Half a dozen bloodletters, wearing their jaguar-skin cloaks, surrounded the stone altar. The sacrificial basin, a deep bowl carved into the surface of the altar-top, was still wet and sticky with fresh blood from the most recent sacrifice. Wren noticed that it had been a monkey, and knew that the carcass would be cleaned for food.

"My daughter has returned!" Nighthawk shouted, and all the bloodletters turned to observe their approach. Wren’s father walked straight up to the altar, the statue of Ractia held up in his hands.

"Are you certain she has brought the correct icon?" one of the bloodletters asked.

"It was taken from Godsgrave," Wren answered. "I tracked it to a collection high up in the mountains, in a place called Whitehill."

"There is only one way to know for certain," Nighthawk said. With a sudden, brutal movement, he smashed the statue into the top of the altar. The white statue shattered, leaving behind only fragments of stone and powder - and something else. Something that did not fit with the rest.

"It looks like the glass the easterners use for their windows," Wren observed.

Her father brushed aside the debris, and lifted something like a seedpod: long, rounded, and thin. The object seemed far too delicate to have survived the chief’s blow, but there it was, undamaged. The entire thing was translucent, like a handful of water from the river.

Inside, they could all see a reservoir of blood. Nighthawk tipped it to one side, and the blood moved. After however many years it had been hidden in that statue, it was still fresh enough not to have congealed or dried out.

"It is the blood of The Mother herself," Nighthawk Wind Dancer muttered. "It is our salvation. The Lady of Blood will return to us. Our goddess will live once again."